


Made In The Dark

by mr-finch (soubriquet)



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: M/M, highschool, more like field-trip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-29
Updated: 2012-10-29
Packaged: 2017-11-17 07:09:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/548943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soubriquet/pseuds/mr-finch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nathan has long blonde hair and Nathan surfs; this is what Harold knows about Nathan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Made In The Dark

Nathan has long blonde hair and Nathan surfs; this is what Harold knows about Nathan.

He plays on a team and the girls talk about him and everyone cares about what he has to say; he never stops his smile.

He smiles once at Harold in the hall when Harold passes him by, and he thinks it must've been directed at someone else, but no, it's to him. Harold turns his chair to glance around at Nathan back in class and Nathan isn't looking; his ears burn, and he faces front again.

They're on a field trip to a bowling alley and put into groups. Harold is on Nathan's team.

He tries to play the best he's ever played. He fails. Nathan makes a joke about his choice of ball being an extra large and Harold has to go and get drinks to hide a blush (of course, _he_ just plays with a small; the others are all too heavy).

Nathan sits across the aisle from him on the bus back. It's dark, and he falls in love with dim coaches navigating the highway at a time when he never sees anyone from school. When they're all just starting to fall asleep.

They have a pitstop at a McDonalds and when they get back, Harold quietly moves from the unoccupied window seat to the aisle. It takes him ten minutes of highway before he even glances over, eyes flitting and trying to consume every colour of the picture that Nathan makes in the dark.

_Hey_ say Nathan's eyes, Nathan's eyes that are of course watching him, that notice everything, all the time. And "Hey," Nathan says, quiet, in a tone that matches the air. 

Harold opens his mouth to say Hi but he can't even get the word out, only shuts it after it becomes apparent that he can't (and Nathan must have seen that--Nathan notices everything, so he swallows and does say "hi").

"You tired?" Is the unexpected question, and what is that, what is he even being asked-- Harold has to restart his brain to unclog its usable space. And after he's realised it's a question he still has to get over the way Nathan had asked it, all low and drawing him in like a fish to deeper water.

"Yeah," Harold stutters out, not really thinking. Everyone agrees with Nathan.

"'Should get some sleep," Nathan says, and ends it with a yawn (catlike, all white teeth and pink tongue and oh no). "You played well."

"No I didn't," Harold's startled into saying, before he can process that he's disagreeing, oh the blasphemy. He'll be ignored and loathed, that's for sure.

But Nathan's eyes grow round and the smile that was only barely there suddenly widens. "Yeah you did. You played before?"

"A few times," Harold lies, getting visions of the lines of text on how-to guides for bowling, the lists of different moves and various angles that could be calibrated for the best possible outcome. A few times, but never in person. Never with Nathan five, four, two feet away and kneeling down every time he bowled, as if he just knew everyone would stare.

"Then you'd know what everyone else was doing wrong," Nathan says, stretching out that last vowel like he's stretching out limbs against the short brittle back of the seat.

Harold doesn't want to answer, or rather, he's just now properly realised that he's (talking to Nathan, talking to him a foot or a foot and a half away) doing something he's never done before, doesn't know how to do, which is making his brain freeze up and cart nonsense down to him while he fights the urge to fly; can't exercise flight in this small space. "The- It- It's in the _grip,_ " he says, and oh God, what a choice of words, except Nathan is nodding along and looking interested and he can't mess this up now. 

To help with his speaking, Harold leans his elbow on the armrest and turns his palm out towards the ceiling. "See- it's like this: people assume that there's only one way to hold a bowling ball, but a conventional grip is actually rather specific. Without a proper grip, the release speed, angle and accuracy of the shot could be affected."

He curves his third and ring fingers inward, tilts his palm a little further towards Nathan just to be sure he can see, before he's back to stately ignoring that this is Ingram he's talking to. "To start with, they should fit in to the second joint in each, and the thumb-" he taps his own with the index of his other hand, "Should go all the way in - straight, never curved. There should be no space on the ball beneath one's hand: that was the mistake that Simon and John were making."

"Hmm," Nathan hums, contemplatively, before leaning one elbow sloppily on his armrest and raising his own hand to the same level, curling his fingers just the same. "So it wasn't their shot?"

Harold exhales, a controlled motion designed to relax himself. It doesn't work. "Likely, no," he says, gazing at his hand and somewhere in the middle distance. "They were.. practically beginners ...showing off, maybe."

Nathan chuckles in the corner of his vision. "Like me, you mean?" There's half a second's pause, and then his hands tilt in the air, dry, warm pads grazing against Harold's index finger before he can even see it; he's really not looking, decidedly not looking, but that touch startles him into wakefulness and he stares.

There's that infamous blush starting again under Harold's cheeks and he is _so_ glad for the low lighting but it doesn't stop, doesn't slow, and Nathan's fingers bump slowly down his hand, along his index finger and down the backs of his ring and middle. Tracing an outline; some kind of sense memory, that's what he thinks with the bit of his brain left available to process things, but the other part is his heart leaping in his throat and he _can't_ think of that.

"Which is the second joint?" Nathan murmurs, and his fingertips nudge at Harold's knuckle. "This one?" They then slide down, just barely touching him, like they wouldn't be unless you could feel the way they graze the tiny hairs along the backs of his fingers -- the sheer presence -- that inevitably bumps into skin now and then. "Or this?"

"That one," Harold says, with his throat unstuck. That one. And surely Nathan must see, Nathan must guess with his scary omniscient ways, but there's nothing being said and -- God, this is so public, there are people literally _right_ there.

"So I should-" he doesn't say _curve around,_ but dictates it with his own fingers, and for a moment Harold thinks he's going to bend his hand right over the top of Harold's but Nathan staves off, just presses gently on the right points to tell Harold to turn his hand back down, like there's a bowling ball gripped beneath it. 

"Up to the second joint," Harold says, and he's blushing something fierce now, but, "Yeah, um, the thumb straight. Yeah, like that." Nathan's hand is next to his, not over it, but still touching side to side and it probably means nothing to any other person (sure, sure it does) but it's electric to Harold Wren and he can barely breathe. 

"I got it," Nathan says, in this reassuring tone that hits just as precisely as a politician might know his subject. Harold doesn't want to know what that could mean, except Nathan's not pulling away and Nathan might... like this? This might.. lead to more? What should he say? How can he know? He doesn't.

"Are you-" Certain, he needs to say, or something anyway, but he just-- doesn't want to end it. He can't break his eyes away from the dim light and the play of passing streetlamps on the edge of Nathan's hair, the low, unbreathable softness and silence that is them just barely touching, the feel that there might be something, even if there is yet not to be.

_You played well,_ Nathan had said, and it couldn't be true, except here he still is playing a hard-won game with the stakes set far too high. And Harold is flying, a flight response set in motion but met alongside by its catalyst, and the dip of feathers are their entangled fingers touching.


End file.
